Forked Tower premade patch coming before 7.3

[RiotSiren]

I'm gonna cut this off at the pass and ignore the 12 pages of people yelling at each other in circles about the obvious problems with this content and it's relation to discord.

Pretty much everyone is in agreement it's access is poorly designed from most angles considering the content type and difficulty. Cool? Cool.

1: The reason they are doing this right now, is because it's a low hanging fruit solution to a major issue that is heavily impacting the content being played. Forked tower was designed to be a part of the OC zone and likely can not be removed into it's own que without a major rework, particularly on the back end. This was the easiest and quickest solution they could put out so that players can actually DO the content. We can argue if discord should be required or not till our hands bleed but that does not change the reality of how the content was created. They simply made a quick change that made the content more easy to access for premade groups.

2: They likely will NEVER create a normal mode for this, not because they have some sort of specific contempt for "casual" players but because at this point it simply isn't really a valid solution to this issue. No matter how much money you can throw at it, development takes time, making a normal mode of forked tower would practically be the equivalent of making a 24 man raid. Just because it's easier to play, does not mean it's easier to make, it would still require just as much play testing, and bug testing as the current Forked tower did. Everyone saying "Just remove _____ _____ and _______,and put it out" have no idea how the development process works, particularly at a company this large. Even if they threw infinite money at it, it would still take far longer then they have. By the time it would be released this content would be long out of it's "new" period, hell it already is. Likely it wouldn't be ready until later portion of OC are already complete, and by that point, its far to late. Yoshi P was saying there will not be a normal mode created, because by the time it would finish it would 100% be dead on arrival with it released as already out dated content in the progression of OC by the time its done.


For the record, I agree there 100% should have been a normal mode, and this content was designed in a way that was "out of touch" to put in generously. Considering how rare this kind of quick change is and how unanimous the distaste for the entry methods of this content is, I think they know they messed up. They looked at the situation, looked at the easiest, quickest, and most importantly viable way the could make the content *Playable* and did it.

They chose the method that made the content more accessible to the people who wanted to approach it as a group, because any solution to make the content more accessible to the general public would take much longer to implement, long enough that it would no longer really be worth it.

So many people on this forum have this bizzare "us vs them" mentality, where they get mad when people who aren't them get what they want and they don't. Nothing about this change takes away from players who want a easier Forked tower, and I 100% agree with you that it should have been normalish difficulty in the first place. But this change specifically isn't about the developers "catering to hardcore" or anything of the sort, it's simply about making the already created content actually accessible.

For whatever it's worth there is no chance they aren't scrambling to add a normal mode to the next big raid at this moment to avoid this situation when the next zone comes out.

[Mawlzy]

2: They likely will NEVER create a normal mode for this, not because they have some sort of specific contempt for "casual" players but because at this point it simply isn't really a valid solution to this issue. No matter how much money you can throw at it, development takes time, making a normal mode of forked tower would practically be the equivalent of making a savage version of a fight.

Nearly that much work, huh?

Yeah I imagine doing that 12 times for 7.X, they're all out of resources.

[RiotSiren]

Nearly that much work, huh?

Yeah I imagine doing that 12 times for 7.X, they're all out of resources.

I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm not defending them, I'm saying it wouldn't realistically be worth it or viable in a quick enough time frame. Developing a properly balanced, fun, and polished normal mode for players is a far bigger task then people seem to think it is. Forked tower was likely being worked on and balanced before DT even came out, for sure the assets existing would speed up the process, but you can't really rush things like play-testing, and the iteration it requires, unless you want extremely unpolished content, which I don't think you do. I agree this should have never been like this in the first place.

[Mawlzy]

I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm not defending them, I'm saying it wouldn't realistically be worth it or viable in a quick enough time frame. Developing a properly balanced, fun, and polished normal mode for players is a far bigger task then people seem to think it is. Forked tower was likely being worked on and balanced before DT even came out, for sure the assets existing would speed up the process, but you can't really rush things like play-testing, and the iteration it requires, unless you want extremely unpolished content, which I don't think you do. I agree this should have never been like this in the first place.

Sensible position. I think many of us are just fuming at the "lack of resources" explanation of why there was no normal mode, when as you note, the amount of work (if committed to early) would be less than 1/12th that of the relatively niche savage raids of 7.X.

[RiotSiren]

Sensible position. I think many of us are just fuming at the "lack of resources" explanation of why there was no normal mode, when as you note, the amount of work (if committed to early) would be less than 1/12th that of the relatively niche savage raids of 7.X.

Ah for sure, thats completely valid. Though I'll be honest I actually appreciate the transparency, like it or not CBU3 is subject to cooperate politics and gets the budget they get. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if he specifically mentioned it to put pressure on those who designate the budget.

Though your statement about " 1/12th that of the relatively niche savage raids of 7.X. " is loaded as all hell though and honestly very incorrect. I'll be honest, I misspoke, as it several fights that all need to keep the phantom jobs in mind. It would be more equivalent to designing another extra 24 man raid in development time, of which we will have 4 (5 if they do another one in OC). Either way though, I still stand by my point, that expecting a fully developed 48 man normal raid (that needs to take into account phantom jobs. current and future) before the content becomes outdated is unrealistic

[Mawlzy]

Ah for sure, thats completely valid. Though I'll be honest I actually appreciate the transparency, like it or not CBU3 is subject to cooperate politics and gets the budget they get. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if he specifically mentioned it to put pressure on those who designate the budget.

Though your statement about " 1/12th that of the relatively niche savage raids of 7.X. " is loaded as all hell though and honestly very incorrect. I'll be honest, I misspoke, as it several fights that all need to keep the phantom jobs in mind. It would be more equivalent to designing another extra 24 man raid in development time, of which we will have 4 (5 if they do another one in OC). Either way though, I still stand by my point, that expecting a fully developed 48 man normal raid (that needs to take into account phantom jobs. current and future) before the content becomes outdated is unrealistic

Then perhaps we can settle on the common ground that the omission of a normal mode FT was a mistake, and that it isn't surprising that those who were looking forward to it are miffed.